Blood Moon Rising

by K. R. Thompson

  “Are Ed and Brian already out searching?” I asked about the two missing Keepers as I crammed my feet into my sneakers and threw my knapsack over my shoulder, silently applauding myself for my quick thinking in putting the book in there when my mom and sister left.

  “We’ve left them in charge of keeping an eye on the Res while we’re gone,” Erik answered. “Didn’t seem right not to keep our own people safe, what with everything going to crap in a handbasket lately. When you lose a dragon, it’s best to watch…”

  “What do you mean lose a dragon?” I interrupted.

  “William was one of the ones scouting last night,” Adam said. “He hasn’t come back.”

  “But wasn’t he with a group? Surely he wasn’t out there alone,” I argued.

  “He was with Albie and his mom. The blood moon started affecting them and their magic left. All three of them started back home, but when they walked through the last Deadland near the Res, Albie said he’d disappeared. One minute he was there, the next he was gone.”

  “We’ve got to start searching now,” I said, opening the front door. “I’ve seen what William could do to a tree. If something out there has him, it’s a lot stronger than we thought.”

  I didn’t need to convince any of them. In an instant, all of them had shifted and were standing on my porch, waiting for me to lock the front door and take my usual place on Adam’s back.

  They ran back into the woods, as if they knew which direction they needed to go first. I clung to the fur between Adam’s shoulders and leaned in close, watching the trees move their branches and limbs as we ran past.

  Within moments, I recognized the woods that surrounded the Res and I spotted Darren’s house a short distance away. The pack stopped, noses pressed to the ground as they memorized the boy’s scent. Then we were off, running deeper into the forest.

  9

  “THERE HE IS,” I whispered, leaning closer to Adam’s body, even though I knew he heard me. I felt the tense muscles of his shoulders beneath my hands even before I said the words. He’d already known. They had lost the scent twice as we went through Deadlands and had to search for it, carefully and slowly walking inch by inch along the border of each one until they were able to pick it back up again. It had taken time, but we were close.

  I glanced at the wolves around us. All of them held their heads low to the ground, their ears pinned back. They all knew he was here too.

  Sure enough, a dark head popped into view, just behind an outcropping of rocks on the side of the mountain. Darren was wearing the same dark blue jacket that I remembered from my dream. When he spotted us, a range of expressions ran across his face. First relief, then embarrassment, and finally sadness. But never anger or murderous rage. Not the emotions I expected to see from a murderer.

  He didn’t try to run away from us. Instead, he walked directly to us, wiping one grimy hand across his face. I spotted wet, dirty streaks on his cheeks, evidence of the tears he was attempting to hide, and I felt sorry for him.

  “It will be all right. It’s over now,” I said softly, hoping to comfort him somehow.

  “It’s not over. It won’t be over until I find her.” Darren’s voice was a lot stronger than I’d expected it to be. “I’ve tried to find her by myself, but I can’t do it. She’s taken too many different forms to keep up with.”

  She. If Darren wasn’t the killer, that left one other person. His mother.

  “You mean you aren’t the Skinwalker?” I stopped, immediately regretting the words as soon as I said them.

  He shook his shaggy hair back from his eyes and gave me a narrow look. “Wait a minute. You thought I was the Skinwalker? Why would you think something like that?”

  I gaped, not sure what to say. Adam’s wolf snorted and shrugged his shoulders, obviously hoping that I’d get the hint to hop off his back. I did and he shifted.

  “You’ve tracked her this far?” he asked Darren the second the wolf left him.

  “Yes. She started out as a wolf near the gift shop. Her prints looked similar to yours, but I spent enough years learning each one of the Pack’s prints, so I knew it wasn’t any of you guys,” Darren replied. “Then she shifted to a crow when it got dark and I lost her until this morning. I caught a glimpse of her as a coyote just a little while ago, but then she was gone again.”

  By this time the rest of the pack had shifted back too.

  Michael was the first to speak. “Dude, you should have waited for us yesterday after we got back from school.”

  “We would have helped you track her,” Tommy added.

  Darren’s gaze dropped to the dry leaves at his feet and a dark flush crept into his cheeks. “I didn’t believe she’d done it until I found the necklace missing in the gift shop. I was hoping to find her by myself so I could persuade her to stop. She’s my mom,” he looked up then and his eyes locked onto mine, the look in them pleading. “And she’s all I have left.”

  “You have all of us too. I told you before you are one of us. That hasn’t changed,” Adam said quietly. “We’re going to help you find your mom. Then we’ll sort everything else out. Where is the last track you found? We’ll follow her from there.”

  “It’s just past those rocks,” Darren pointed to the place I had seen him appear.

  Adam and the others shifted back and left to inspect the place he had indicated, leaving me with Darren. He glanced at me and was getting ready to turn back to watch the wolves as they searched for a scent, when his eyes went to my necklace.

  “Where did you get that?” he asked, though by the tone of his voice I knew he already knew the answer.

  “Adam gave it to me for my birthday. I think your mom made it.”

  He nodded. “She did. She was making that when I first suspected what was going on. Have you noticed anything strange since you put it on?”

  “Well, since you’ve asked, yeah. I haven’t been able to ‘see’ anything for days now. I thought it was because of the blood moon.”

  He reached out to touch it, but stopped, fingers an inch from me. “Do you mind if I look at it closer?”

  “Not at all.” I unclasped the chain and handed it to him.

  The instant it left my skin, visions flooded me, one overlapping the other, as if there had been dozens of things that I should have seen for days and now they were all trying to push into my head at once.

  I focused on one—the one that held the face of Mandi. It was the one that I knew held a glimpse of the near future. She was close and if we didn’t get to her soon, someone else was going to die.

  “The moon wasn’t responsible. It’s the earth in the back of the cabochon. It’s from Burke’s Garden. It’s been blocking your magic,” Darren was telling me, his nimble fingers finding a catch on the back of the medallion that slid open, spilling the fine bits of dirt to the ground. He snapped it shut and handed it back to me. “It should be fine now.”

  “Thanks.” To be safe, I slipped it into the pocket of my jeans, where it wouldn’t touch my skin, and started toward the Pack. “I know where we have to go,” I told them, pointing toward the narrow path that led up the mountain to our left. “She’s on the other side…and she’s not alone.”

  As if on cue, a sharp cry of a creature that I’d never heard before split the air and the atmosphere smelled charred. Burnt.

  “She has a dragon,” Darren said, his voice shaky.

  William.

  Adam yipped, his voice ringing as clearly in my mind as it ever had before. Hurry up and get on!

  Erik stopped and picked up Darren and we took off, up the mountain.

  The visions were still running through my head and as Adam ran, I let the ones that I knew pertained to Mandi come through.

  I found the book Darren had brought home from his lesson with Evan Black Water. My heart broke for him that he wouldn’t have the gift of the Keepers—that he had lost that part of his ancestors’ history that by all rights should have been his.

  I flipped throug
h the pages and found a page with its corner bent, holding a place he no doubt had found interesting. The legend of the Skinwalker—the story of the human who held the magic of the animals whose lives he took. I snapped the book shut and continued making supper, but all that night the words I’d read replayed in my mind.

  The next day, I bumped into the necklace beneath the counter of the gift shop—the one that had been worn by the only true Skinwalker my people had ever known. I hadn’t even realized I’d put it on until I felt its magic pulse along my skin.

  It was real, I realized. My son no longer had to miss out on anything he should have been. I had the power to change his future. I could give him everything he deserved. And more.

  So in tune with Mandi’s memory, I didn’t realize we’d run into another Deadland until I felt the sharp sting of a branch as it smacked me.

  Duck! Adam warned a second before it hit me—too late for me to register anything but the shock of the blow.

  Are you all right? he asked.

  “Yes. I’m okay.” My shoulder throbbed, but I shook it off. There were more important things to worry about right now than a bruise.

  I need you to tell me which way we need to go. The Deadland is blocking my sense of smell. I can’t track her.

  “Stay straight, then head just around that bend. That’s where she is,” I said, twisting my fingers tighter into his fur as he ran faster, ducking branches that began swatting at us as if they didn’t wish us to go any further.

  I heard Erik yip behind us, then heard a strangled cry as Darren fell off his back.

  We’re okay. Keep going. We’ll catch up.

  A plume of smoke curled above the trees ahead of us. We were close.

  A scorched set of trees were the first things that I saw, followed by a bear who stood below them, something clutched tight in her arms.

  She heard us and swung around and I found that it wasn’t something she held, but someone.

  William was swinging in her tight hug like a limp rag doll, his neck caught beneath one arm. Flames licked along his skin as if they were on their way to a new destination.

  And they were, I realized.

  Mandi was taking his magic.

  I jumped off Adam’s back. “Stop!” I screamed. The bear answered me with a roar of her own, black rubbery lips pulled back from her sharp teeth, no doubt daring me to try to stop her.

  I knew I couldn’t go any closer. I had to stop her from where I stood. If she decided to swat me with one of her gigantic claws, that would be the end.

  Don’t go any closer, Adam warned, coming up with the same conclusion as I had. Speak her name. Take her magic.

  “Mandi!” I yelled. “Mandi, you have to stop.”

  The bear continued on, not so much as hesitating when I said her name.

  The book is wrong, I thought, shrugging out of my backpack as fast as I could to jerk it out. I flipped through the pages, landing on that of Crow Woman’s description. I reread it. No, I’d done everything right. Why had her magic stayed?

  “I need something of hers,” I muttered. “Something that will trap her magic in the book.”

  Will fur do? Adam asked, crouching low, getting ready to spring.

  “Probably,” I answered, “or her necklace.”

  “Wait. Let me try.”

  Darren walked past me, showing no fear of the bear as he stopped merely feet from her.

  “Mom.”

  The bear paused, then growled and bared her teeth.

  “Mom, you have to stop. You can’t do this. Please, Mom.” Tears were running down Darren’s cheeks.

  She loosened her grip on William and he slumped to the ground, then she took a step closer to Darren.

  Michael and Tommy had sneaked behind her and when she dropped William, they each took hold of one of his arms and whisked him to safety. I heard him mutter something about “torching her next time,” and I knew our dragon was going to be fine.

  Adam growled uneasily in his place beside of me, no doubt worrying about the one person still left in harm’s way.

  But Darren didn’t show any fear at all at the bear’s advance. Instead, he took a step forward, closing the gap between them. “I need you, Mom. Please come back to me.”

  The bear disappeared and Mandi stood in its place, a small, slight woman who seemed so at odds with the huge animal she’d been only seconds before.

  “It’s time to take that off,” Darren said, reaching up to unclasp the necklace from her neck.

  “No, I have to keep it,” she replied, taking a step back. “I can do anything when I have it.”

  But Darren’s fingers had already found the latch and it fell from her neck into his free hand. He turned and quickly threw it to me. I knew he only wanted to get it as far from his mother as he could, but I was going to destroy it once and for all.

  I opened up the book to a blank page and dropped the amber stone in its center. The paper sizzled as the magic left, seeping into the book, then the stone darkened, as if its life had left it.

  “We’re going to break it to be sure,” Adam announced. “Whatever magic it had leaves right now.”

  I tilted the book and let it drop to the ground. It landed on a flat rock at my feet.

  That was convenient, I thought, as Adam picked up another rock with a sharp end from nearby and smashed the setting to bits.

  “That makes me feel better,” he said with a sigh, tossing the rock away when he’d finished.

  Mandi’s voice quavered. “It makes me feel better too.” She was holding her son tight. “I am so sorry. For everything.”

  Another vision hit me and I saw the night she had killed Frollock. She had been running through the forest as a wolf when the girl jumped out at her. The Spriteblood realized the magic she held and tried to take it from her. As a human, Frollock hadn’t stood a chance. That was the first time Mandi let the magic take completely over. It had kept her safe. And it had given her more power.

  “No!” Darren’s shout pulled me out of the vision and I saw Mandi being held up in the air by her throat.

  Wynter sneered, her usually musical voice sounding like thunder in my ears. “A life for a life. You shall pay for what you have done.”

  Mandi’s face was turning red. “I’m…sorry…didn’t mean to…”

  Where I might not have been brave enough to take on a bear, I had no problem with a Spriteblood. I raced to them, in spite of Adam’s attempt to stop me.

  “Wynter, stop. It wasn’t her fault. It was the magic in Crow Woman’s necklace,” I said as quickly as I could, stopping right in front of them. Mandi’s eyes were starting to bulge from the lack of oxygen.

  That didn’t stop Wynter, so I tried something else. Something I knew she wanted more than anything.

  “You told me once that you weren’t what you wished to be. That’s why you take the form of Mrs. Graham.”

  That got me a small acknowledgement. Her endless blue eyes flicked to me in an instant, then back to Mandi. The choking continued.

  “If you kill her, you’ll be more Spriteblood than human. Everything that you’ve worked toward being for so long will have been for nothing.”

  As if those words had been magic, she released her grip and Mandi fell to the ground. Darren grabbed her and they scrambled away.

  Wynter turned her attention to me, then her gaze dropped to what I held. “I see you found my book,” she said, her voice returning to the familiar, musical sound of raindrops.

  “Yes. You had it made so that you could take magic away,” I replied, deciding to let her know that I knew exactly what power lay in my hands.

  “No,” she said in an odd tone. Then she said words that caught me completely off guard. “I had it made so you could take my magic away.”

  10

  THE BLOOD MOON had passed and the magic returned to those who had lost it. School went back to business as usual, but that’s about all that did.

  I began spotting four shadowy figures that a
lways seemed to be a short distance away, waiting. For what, I wasn’t sure. They followed me all day, though no one else ever seemed to see them but me. I ignored the majority of biology class and concentrated on their forms as they all stood beside of Mr. Wickner as he wrote on the chalkboard.

  A crow, a coyote, a wolf, and bear, I thought, as some of their characteristics took shape. The spirits of the animals who were killed.

  After class, I headed to the library—to the one person I knew could tell me what I needed to know.

  Mrs. Graham sat behind her desk, looking as dour as ever. When the door shut loudly behind me, she gave me a glare that would have made anyone in school shudder. Being as she had told me the secret of why she’d had her book made only the night before, her expression didn’t deter me in the least.

  I stopped at her desk and pointed at the shadows trailing me. “I need to know what I have to do to get them to go wherever it is they are supposed to go.”

  She shrugged, as if the problem of four animal ghosts wasn’t a problem to worry over. “You took the magic that held them and put it in the book. They’re only following it.”

  I took my knapsack off my back and took the book out. I’d been carrying it around with me all day and was beginning to become more than slightly cranky. “So you’re telling me that they are going to follow me as long as I have the book.”

  “Or until you give them a place to go.” Her beady eyes bore into mine.

  If this book didn’t have mine and Adam’s magical print in it, I’d give it back to you and see how well you dealt with them, I thought. But I knew I’d never give her this book back. It was mine to keep…along with four ghostly animals, it seemed.

  “You can make it smaller…lighter,” Wynter said, losing her false image of Mrs. Graham as she stared at me. She pointed to the book in my hands. “Wish it smaller, and you can hide it away. You won’t have to carry it.”

  “How do I wish it smaller and why haven’t you asked for it back?” I asked, suspicious.

  “Say the words and it will obey.” Her endless blue gaze left the book and met my eyes straight on. “I have no wish to keep it. I meant the words I said. There will come a day when I will ask you to take my magic, to make me the human that I have always longed to be. You are the only one I would trust to do so.”